This
Wednesday, a demonstrably pro-business U.S. Supreme Court may engrave the headstone
marking the final resting place of our former representative democracy.

The
Barbwire TV show will be in re-runs until SNCAT's studio move is completed.
You may view them M-F 2-4:00 p.m. PDT on Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter
cable channels 16, 216 and high-def 80-295. Keep
an eye on the Barbwire
print edition for updates.

Past
12 monthsUse the search tool you will find at page right
at the above link. It will return the 19 newest. A button for older
shows is being installed. You may also search by date  M-F for
the past year save holidays.

The
case at hand is so important that the Supremes have moved the traditional
start of the court's new term from the first Monday in October to the second
Tuesday of September.

Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission could put immortal
vampire corporations in permanent control of the nation. If you think matters
can't get worse, you haven't been paying attention to the phony health care
debate.

Citizens United produced a little-watched 2008 film entitled Hillary: The
Movie. You can imagine what it said about you-know-who and her husband.

The Federal Election Commission (currently chaired by former Reno lawyer Steve
Walther) busted the sponsoring front group because it had received corporate
funding.

It has long been illegal for corporations
to directly bankroll federal election campaigns. Corporations can contribute
unlimited money to non-federal races, which explains how the mining and gambling
industries keep Nevada a company town.

The central issue before the court is whether corporations enjoy the same
free speech rights as individuals.

All of this is rooted in a very, very old mistake by the Supreme Court itself.

"In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), Justice
Harlan, delivering the opinion of the court, said the question regarding
whether a corporation is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment
is an issue upon which the Court 'did not deem it necessary to pass,'
according to LawGuru.com.

"In the head notes of the case prepared by Supreme Court reporter J.
C. Bancroft Davis, (it reads) 'The defendant Corporations are persons
within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to
the Constitution...'

"Because of illness, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite never
reviewed the head notes.Thus, without any deliberation, decision or ruling
by the United States Supreme Court, the law of our nation has proceeded since
1886 with an accepted legal precedent based on the mistake of a clerk who
reported something that never occurred."

I have long screamed against our current system of fully tax-deductible corporate
propaganda campaigns which have performed wondrous tasks such as making smoking
stylish for women, allowing them to eclipse guys in the lung cancer stats.

On Labor Day weekend in 1994, I
wrote "For decades, corporate America has spent billions on 'corporate
communications,' forcing helpless workers into 'economic education' and 'human
relations' classes. It worked. A good number of union workers voted for Ronald
Reagan in 1980. For 70 years, corporate America has daily distributed
hundreds of free newspaper editorials and magazine articles, often under the
auspices of some high-sounding think tank or 'policy research' center. The
Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute
and many others dance to the tune of the National Association of Manufacturers
and the Business Roundtable. They ship pamphlets, tapes and films to schools
and companies across the land, all subsidized by the worker who pays taxes."

Shortly before President Nixon
appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court, Lewis Powell wrote a memorandum
for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He urged business "to buy the top academic
reputations in the country" to put out slanted studies backing up the
anti-worker, anti-government line.

"It was a virtual manifesto
for the neo-conservative movement," author Alex Carey
stated.

In 1978, when corporate America was spending a billion dollars a year on propaganda,
Justice Powell authored a majority decision upholding the taxpayer subsidy
of such claptrap. Thus was the gun loaded for the corporate-funded assassination
of national health care '94, aka Hillarycare.

Conservative Justice Byron "Whizzer" White strongly dissented:
"The special status of corporations has placed them in a position to
control vast amounts of economic power which may, if not regulated, dominate
not only the economy but also the very heart of our democracy, the electoral
process. The State need not permit its own creation to consume it," White
wrote.

Professor Carey made some recommendations on how to battle the P.R. beast.

Advocacy advertising unrelated to a company's product or service is not tax
deductible "but there is in fact much tax evasion in this connection,"
so IRS enforcement must be tightened, he said.

Corporations are able to marshal huge resources to have their way. Lifting
long-accepted legal limits on campaign contributions would turn their de facto
(actual, in fact) dominance of the country into control de jure (by right
or law).

This battle has put the National Rifle Association, the American Civil Liberties
Union and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on the side of
total deregulation, while former Common Cause leader Fred Wertheimer
supports the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002." Better known
as McCain-Feingold, the lower court upheld the law in ruling that the financing
of the Hillary hatchet job was illegal.

THE SORE BOTTOM LINE. Americans consider
themselves rugged individuals, independent as the day is long. With that attitude,
you'd think they'd react with outrage when told to go screw themselves. As
the current corporate-funded propaganda campaign against national health care
has proven, about half of Americans will indeed compliantly go screw themselves
when ordered to do so by corporate propagandists who stand to profit from
such rape and pillage.

And we can't even kiss ourselves afterward.

READ MORE ABOUT IT. The expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com
will have links to many past commentaries on these issues as well as to material
byAlex Carey and Lewis
Lapham.

CELEBRATE THE ANTIDOTE TO CORPORATE PROPAGANDA.
Attend the grand opening of Sierra Nevada Community
Access Television's fancy new digs this Tuesday from 3:00 to 8:00 p.m.
at Meadowood Mall. The only remaining non-operational aspect is the broadcast
studio which houses the TV-web simulcast of my daily live call-in talk show.
I am thus heading fundraising to get community radio station KJIV back online
and ready for an fm launch. Go to ReSurge.TV
for more information, to get on my mailing list, contribute
or volunteer.

By
one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about
$3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public
opinion to suit big business goals.Lapham's
number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey
noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures
had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for
inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)

Adjusted
for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04
in 2005 dollars.

Conservatives
Help Wal-Mart, and Vice VersaAs Wal-Mart
struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable
ally: conservative research groups.New
York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.